I mentioned a few weeks ago how Bluprint, formerly Craftsy, had gone under, with a not insignificant number of jobs to be lost and plenty of panic about how people who had paid for hundreds of hours of video content were going to be able to access what they had been promised a ‘lifetime’ subscription too. Well, since then it seems there have been a few twists and turns in the story!
When I heard there was going to be a special exhibition on orchids at Kew Gardens, I knew this was an exhibition I would happily make an effort to see. For those of you not familiar with Kew, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site home to over 50 000 plants and has one of the most diverse plant collections in the world. For the embroiderers, it is a beautiful botanical garden situated nearby Hampton Court palace if you want to sneak some stitching!
After the RSN Day Class, I still had rather a lot of work to do on my goldwork and silk shading monogram. The stem stitch part was completed but I still needed to finish the raised leaf stitch, the shading on the flower, a lot of couching and some chip work too!
This Goldwork & Silk Shading Monogram was a Royal School of Needlework day class (well, two day class would be more accurate) that I took nearly two years ago! The good news is that it does seem to still be running at Hampton Court and possibly some of the satellites so if you do feel inspired maybe there is still chance to catch it.
I seem to have been doing a lot of ribbonwork lately and while thinking about some new designs of my own, it seemed like a good time to finally finish the Ribbonwork Heart piece by Sophie Long that I started a very long time ago… This is the piece that is on the front cover of her Ribbonwork Embroidery book that I reviewed a while ago.
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Ribbonwork embroidery (or ribbon embroidery) is, rather unsurprisingly, the art of sewing with ribbons. This is often done in combination with embroidery floss and other materials. As well as being delightfully quick to work up, ribbon embroidery is excellent value in the effect versus effort department, with even the simplest of stitches looking very dramatic. Also, who couldn’t love something that involves getting to play with silk?
I had the pleasure of taking a Royal School of Needlework Day Class with the author of Ribbonwork Embroidery, Sophie Long, over a year ago now. When I heard that she was going to be writing a book on ribbonwork embroidery, one of her specialisms, I was rather excited to say the least.
As well as the more intensive embroidery qualifications, the Royal School of Needlework (RSN) runs regular day classes as a way for people to try new techniques or get an insight into what it is like to study with one of the world’s most prestigious hand embroidery schools. Occasionally, the RSN teams up with other organisations to put on special classes on either different themes or different skills.
Recently, the RSN ran a series of classes at the Fashion Museum in Bath, with designs based on items on exhibition there. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Needlelace day class, stitching a small butterfly/dragonfly/questionable insect as inspired by a motif on an embroidered Elizabethan woman’s waistcoat.
Another day at the Royal School of Needlework for me, to do battle with the beast that is my Jacobean crewelwork.
At the end of the last class, I had rather a lot of homework that mostly involved meters of raised stem band. While I had managed to get some of it done, there was still rather a lot to go and, as tends to happen with these things, life somewhat got in the way.
When I started this blog, I honestly anticipated it would just be read by a handful of beleaguered relatives and friends and web crawlers. Much as I really wanted to be able to contribute something to inspire and help other people, just in the same way so many other people have helped me, I expected the blog to sit in some cold, dark corner of the Internet, being populated in obscurity.
It came as a great surprise one day when I received an email from a reader, asking a little more about my experience starting out studying with the Royal School of Needlework. That reader was the lovely Catherine over at Hillview Embroidery who is now zooming away with her Jacobean crewelwork, featuring the world’s most adorable oversized squirrel.
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It’s New Year’s Eve and traditionally the time for decrying all the disasters and misery of the past year and making promising about slinking into the next year with perfectly coiffured hair, two dress sizes smaller, speaking six new languages whilst simultaneously completing an MBA and running an ultramarathon.
I’m not entirely sure whether to write 2016 off as a year of disastrous underachievement. There are still five billion works in progress that haven’t really progressed as much as they should, there are still projects and designs that haven’t made it off the pages of sketchbooks and the stash monster looks like it may be making territorial gains.
astitchornine 